This blog is based in Northeast Ohio, what was "La Nation du Chat," the Cat Nation, as the French-Canadian furtraders called the Land of the Erie Indians. The blog will touch on many issues: nature, the environment, literature, poetry, society, and politics. Around here we think of the Lake Erie shoreline as the North Coast of the United States--a Frontier in the midst of the Rust Belt.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

When Lake Erie Freezes

Lake Erie--Frozen Solid

the
awesome sight--huge
pressure domes of ice
heaved into ridges
chaotic frozen waves
far as the eye can see

wondrous
powerful lake

I
could walk to Canada
if I had the imagination

I love Lake Erie in all seasons, in all its moods. This has been true from my earliest childhood in Willoughby-on-the-Lake, when my dad and my Uncle Jack would take us swimming down the street from our house. The above poem, written long ago, began with images of the Lake. But as poems sometimes do, it moved in an unexpected direction and became a poem about the power of imagination; it became a poem about creativity, about the writing of poetry.